


Here Be Hexagons

by Wannabi_bridge



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Ninja technology, OC Clans, Owls, SI/OC, Yuki no Kuni | The Land of Snow, Yukigakure | Village Hidden in the Snow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:27:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28726587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wannabi_bridge/pseuds/Wannabi_bridge
Summary: Ninja Antarctica was nice enough of a place to be reincarnated, she supposed. At least when you were born with a kekkei genkai that made you immune to the cold. She wasn’t sure how anyone here could manage without it.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 96
Collections: A Collection of Beloved Inserts





	1. Chapter 1

I woke up to the feeling of not knowing where I was, which was normal enough. What wasn’t normal was that the feeling didn’t go away after a few disoriented seconds. I had never seen the room I was in before. It had a low double bed with intricately painted frost blooming on the wall behind it. Teal curtains covered a wall’s length of windows to one side of it while pale wooden cabinets stood on the other. The remaining wall had a sliding door with a crib beside it.

The thing that threw me was that I was in the crib. There was a narwhal stuffed-animal the size of my body next to me.

It wasn’t every day that your reality shattered.

I remembered having no snow on Christmas, then rejoicing when it finally fell on New Year’s. Spending one of the last two weeks of my winter vacation in the tranquility of my apartment, watching a snowstorm outside while huddled in blankets to supplement the unreliable heaters. I remembered trying to piece together the plot of a movie from its CinemaSins episode at 3 in the morning, but not how it ended. I idly wondered where YouTube ended up going on autoplay without me there to curate the content. How long it was before my computer died. It was better than wondering how long it was before my body was found and how long it was before they held my funeral. I was supposed to meet up with Nate on Friday, but he might have just thought I forgot and was busy when I didn’t show up or answer my phone.

How was the news broken to my parents?

I didn’t know for a fact that I died and was reincarnated; it just seemed like the most likely explanation. Baby hands clumsily responded to the commands of my motor cortex.

The sliding door opened and a woman walked in. Her hair was light brown and her eyes yellow. The parts of her eyebrows toward the outside of her face were absent, leaving behind two ovals to separate her forehead from the rest of her round face. She smiled at me when she saw that I was awake, her eyes as warm as suns. 

\---

From what I could gather, that first woman I saw was my mother now. She’s the one that breastfed me in any case (which felt a lot more comforting and normal than it had any right to). I also seemed to have a father and sister. My new father had pale orange hair and a beard and eyes of the same color. My new sister looked to be about 5-6 years old and had hair in a shade right between our mother’s and father’s. Her eyes were as vibrantly yellow as mother’s and everyone in the family had the same funny oval-eyebrows. Based on my parents I knew that I would look different than I did Before, but it was still a surprise to look into the mirror and see light ginger hair and vibrant orange eyes. I wondered if I was born into a different world than the one I was in before if orange and yellow were natural eye colors.

Whatever world I was born into, it seemed to have heavy Japanese influences. The architectural style of the house I lived in had a very Japanese feel to it, what with its sliding doors and prominent engawa, and my family ate with chopsticks The hexagonal windows were decidedly _not Japanese_ , but I supposed that if this world had yellow and orange eyes, hexagons featuring heavily in architecture wasn't the weirdest thing around.

What was much weirder was that while my mother wore season-appropriate clothing, the short yukatas and shorts that my sister and father tended to wear outside did not look like they held any warmth whatsoever. My mother had the sense to swaddle _me_ in blankets when she occasionally took me to our backyard garden to see the snow, and I wanted to scream when she didn’t bat an eye at my sister doing snow angels in a summer dress.

Even weirder was the owls. There were three in our family: a large brown one, a young snowy owl, and a very small one, which looked like it was newly hatched. I’m not going to lie, I was a little freaked out when I was shown the bigger owls for the first time. The brown one was bigger than _I_ was, and _could owls even be domesticated_? The tiny newborn chick quickly became my daily companion, sitting by me through the tedium of everyday life. I didn’t know what to think when I first layed eyes on her ruffled brown and black form, but we had this indescribable _connection_ and I quickly decided that I loved the little fluffball. From the way she looked at the world through her big yellow eyes I could tell that even though she couldn’t _speak_ , she certainly _understood_. She was a kindred spirit, and her constant presence was comforting when all I could think about was the people I’d lost. It was also really cute when she'd snuggle into my side for warmth.

The monotony of life was broken up by visits from various people; my parents seemed to be pretty popular. All of them had ovular eyebrows, so I supposed it was a cultural thing around these parts. The most common visitor was a stern, but gentle old woman who I assumed to be my grandmother. Once, she was accompanied by an old man with extremely long gray hair who had the same eyes as father. He looked at me in a warm way that made me feel _seen_ on a deep level and he was instantly my favorite assumed grandparent.

Orange-haired people that I thought must be other relatives visited almost as often as my grandmother. One of them had a small baby about the same age as me who I was expected to somehow interact with. We were often placed on the floor together in my little play area and ended up just staring at each other. What else were we supposed to do? The first time we met when we were placed next to each other he instantly started making sweeping motions with his arms and hit me hard on the nose. It wasn’t a good first impression and I was not amused. Based on the laughter of the adults it probably showed. ‘You don’t just get to _hit_ people in the _face_ and have it be _cute_ ,’ I silently fumed, none of the adults any the wiser. I was considering hitting the kid back in revenge when I realised that I was considering hitting an actual baby. The vaguely vacant look in his eyes clued me into the fact that he didn’t have a fully developed adult mind like me. I didn’t know what to do with the kid.

Women with all manner of hair colors came to have tea with my mother from time to time. There was one lady with purple hair who had creepy black eyes that didn’t look like they had sclera when she was looking forward. It put her in the uncanny valley and I couldn’t help but be vaguely uncomfortable when her gaze met mine. When I saw her for the first time I lost all hope that this could have been my old world. A conspiracy in which everyone had weird pets, colored their hair and shaved their eyebrows was possible, but eyes with no sclera couldn’t be faked.

Desperate to understand what people were saying, I started funneling all of my attention into learning the language spoken around me as fast as possible. When I started paying attention I quickly noticed that I was called Yuu-chan and my sister Hanemi-chan. I got a name to call my owl too: Hiyoku. I thought it was beautiful.

It was refreshing to start to be able to understand what the people around me were saying for a while, but it didn’t make my days much less boring. The topics of discussion were so _normal_ . None of the important topics, like _why the hell were people wearing summer clothes in the middle of the winter_ or _why do we have owls again_ were ever touched on. I figured that it was just my luck that these kinds of big things were so obvious to everyone that they never needed to be clarified.

I couldn’t say that I didn’t find out anything interesting though. The mysteries of where my new parents and sister would disappear to sometimes were answered. It sounded like my dad worked at some kind of weapons development laboratory finding ways to freeze things quickly and when my sister -Hanemi- would disappear for a few hours with one of my parents it was to train. They were never really clear on what the training was _for_ exactly, but it sounded like it could have been a martial art. I really wanted to know what it was and if I could watch some time. I was desperate for something _different and_ watching my new family kick ass, or at least try to, depending on their level, would surely be entertaining. 

When I thought I had a semi-okay grasp of the key-terminology of whatever language it was that people were speaking (I started calling it Japanese in my head to simplify things) I tried putting my lips to work. My plan was for my first word to be “Hiyoku” to show my appreciation for her staying by me for all the time we’d been together. Suffice it to say that my lips _didn’t work_. Hiyoku looked very sympathetic at my frustration when I couldn’t get the “Hi” part of her name down properly. I could just and just manage a warbling “Yog”, and I quickly decided that I could save learning to speak for a more age-appropriate time. 

I wasn’t sure how much time was passing, but it couldn’t have been more than four or so months since I became conscious since it had been winter the whole time. Then again, I didn’t know how old I was when I came to, so starting to talk could very well be age appropriate at this point. I realized that I actually didn’t know what age babies were supposed to start talking in the first place, though, so I supposed that I’d just go with the flow and start when I’d start. 

I declared (non-verbally to Hiyoku) that my next project would be increasing my mobility. I thought it would be easier than speaking since it required less fine control, but oh how wrong I was. Despite remembering the mechanics of how crawling was _supposed_ to work, just getting into the right position of being supported by all my limbs was practically impossible. I did develop a kind of shimmy on my stomach that I successfully used to move from one end of my little play-carpet to the other, though. I felt a huge swell of pride at the great achievement when I managed it for the first time, but Hiyoku just looked like she was silently laughing at me when I preened at her.

As I was plotting how to get the biggest reaction out of my family with my new mad shimmying skills, I was interrupted for festival preparations. Mother and father had been coordinating places to visit with friends for the festival for weeks and my sister wouldn’t stop obsessing over her new yukata, so I had known it was coming, just not _when_ exactly. I still didn’t have the names of the days of the week down properly and I had no idea what the date was. I was excited to find out what a “founding day” festival was like, though.

My mother took me to our bedroom and I was quickly dressed in several warm layers of children’s kimono in varying shades of teal and blue. An orange obi was tied around my waist and my feet were shoved into adorable fluffy boots. 

When Hanemi was dressed, I saw that her getup had the same color scheme as mine, but was once again wayy too light for the winter season. Where I had at least three layers of insulation, her prided new yukata only had one thin layer. It was beautiful and had an intricate water-ripple pattern, but _still_. She was a child and could get pneumonia. If pneumonia even existed in this world, that is. Based on the attitudes of the adults around me I was starting to think that whether you wanted to be warm outside or not was a matter of personal preference rather than something with consequences.

When she twirled in the mirror I saw that her yukata had an insignia sewn into the back that I thought I’d seen on some of our visiting relatives. It was a hexagon with a fern leaf blooming from the bottom right corner to the top left and I thought that it might be a clan symbol of some kind for us orange-haired folk if this world’s societal structure was as much like old-timey Japan as I suspected. 

My mother’s layered, _warm_ kimono had a different insignia on the back and a yellow outer layer that matched her eyes, and now that I thought about it, the eyes of all our owls. That was certainly an interesting train of thought for later. The fabric had an elegant pattern of swooping birds that I could have stared at for hours (it would definitely beat staring at baby toys and the walls by a mile). 

Father walked into the room and beamed: “My, you lovely ladies are positively glowing!” Hanemi smiled as wide as I thought her face could handle and mother laughed in a small tinkling way. “Thank you otou-san! I guess you look kind of good too,” Hanemi replied. Father took the sort-of-compliment in stride with a warm “Thank you, moonbeam. We should get going now if we want to get the good seats.” He winked as he walked out of the room, the rest of us following. “But _otou-san,_ they _save_ those seats for us!” Hanemi countered. As mother started wrapping a fluffy shawl around me father replied without missing a beat: “Ah, you caught me moonbeam. We’ll hardly get to sit at them if we miss the whole speech by being late though.” Hanemi giggled as we set off.

It occurred to me that this was my first time leaving our house and I longed for the comforting presence of Hiyoku as we stepped out into the cold. I wasn’t sure what I expected to be on the other side of our front door, but it was certainly not the maze of raised, roof-covered engawa-like walkways that I was faced with. The walkways snaked around buildings and the beams supporting the roof structure were strung with colorful glowing lanterns. As we walked further down, all the walkways I could see converged into a wider one that was aswarm with fellow orange-heads. There were several seating areas lining the walkway in gazebo-like structures, but they were all empty. Everyone was moving, all clad in light yukata in similar styles to what Hanemi and father wore with the same hexagonal symbol on the back. Most people seemed to be drifting up the path in the same direction as we were, and continued walking with us in a single stream even as we stepped down from the raised walkways at a large gate.

This certainly made sense as the snowy road we were spit out onto had snow thigh-deep, and veering off the well-tread path would inevitably lead to getting your formalwear wet…Or so you would have thought. There were some rebellious individuals carefreely jogging _on top_ of the snow without even leaving footprints and I had no clue how they were doing it. 

Traditional Japanese houses lined both sides of the street when we got past the wall that hid the walkway-maze behind it. They all had festive lanterns hanging from their eaves and some even had windows that were _rectangular._ I was inevitably flooded by memories of buildings that I used to know and felt deeply cold. 

As we trekked on, more and more people joined our procession and the single houses melted into increasingly large grey apartment buildings with eclectic hexagonal fenestration. The architectural style was different from anything I had seen in the old world, which helped to snap me out of my brooding. Streetlights sprouted to our sides, but they were off, all light provided by yet more lanterns strung between them. 

Our collective destination was a large theater that was already packed with people. As we slipped in, mother pulled child-sized noise reducing headphones from somewhere and gently placed them on my ears. I was immediately grateful because the crowd that was already gathered was _loud_. We slowly waded through it, and as father had said, there were three empty seats for us in the front row next to my confirmed grandmother and some other relatives I recognized. 

Heavy dark blue curtains covered in a smattering of stars were drawn closed on the stage in front of us. A constellation shaped like a backwards lambda shone prominently at the center of the design. A podium stood in front of it and I was reminded of the fact that apparently we were here to listen to a speech.

It didn’t seem to be starting quite yet though, and Hanemi chattered to our parents excitedly about a play she and father were going to see and one of my relatives chastised another for forgetting to set up microphones for something or other. To the right of our little sea of orange was a light-teal-haired family that had intimidating dark blue streaks extending from the outer corners of their eyes to their cheeks and to our left was a group of people who would have looked normal even by my old world’s standards who had light brown hair and black eyes. _Their oval eyebrows would have stood out though_ , I realised belatedly. I was already so used to everyone having them that they no longer stood out as weird.

One of my relatives had just turned to start baby-talking at me when a hush fell over the crowd as a man walked onto the stage from the side. After a moment I noticed that the man was none other than my beloved assumed grandfather. The way he stalked to the podium had a mesmerizing feeling of power to it and I was so distracted by his gait that I only noticed what he was wearing when he stopped and cleared his throat. 

On his head was a vaguely familiar teal hat with a flattened pyramid shape and a symbol at the front. His hair was tied close to the bottom, and on his body was a teal yukata with a white robe thrown over it. Behind him two thick dark-grey metal poles were strapped to his back in the shape of an X.

He started his speech and my mind stuttered to a stop when I realised where I knew the hat from.

…

…

…

What did he _mean_ “It was forty years ago when _Yukigakure_ made the leap from an idea to reality”??


	2. Chapter 2

_Yukigakure,_ he said.

My mind spun.

-gakure = Hidden Village = _Naruto._

_..._

What?

I now had a wider context to place my new existence into, and just… what?

Of course my understanding of reality had to be shattered once more.

I was now not only reincarnated, but reincarnated in a world that ran on deception and ninja-magic fueled violence.

Just… what?

I took comfort in the fact that I couldn’t remember anything about Yukigakure from what I had watched of Naruto the anime, which was the entire thing minus some filler. I thought that my lack of knowledge meant that Yuki wouldn’t be involved in any of the devastating events that were to come. _Or which could have already gone by,_ I corrected. Given that I just found out _where_ I was I could hardly be expected to know _when_ I was in relation to canon. Hopefully, being here meant that that information would never be relevant to my life anyway. I could live completely normally, separate from it all and safe.

My grandfather’s speech probably contained a lot of relevant information that I could use to gauge where I was on the timeline, but I couldn’t keep my attention on what he was saying. Whenever I looked at him I saw his hat and metal rod-weapons and was reminded of the fact that he was a _Kage_ and a _ninja,_ which meant that I was _actually in Naruto_. As an abstract concept it was manageable, but as a reality it was _insane_. 

How was it supposed to be possible anyway? Naruto was just a work of fiction written by starving manga artist Kizashi Kishimoto! Surely if he had god-like universe creation powers or sight into another world he would be doing something other than scraping a living writing manga? What did I know about what people who theoretically had superpowers did for fun, though.

In any case this could just be a coincidence of cosmic proportions and it _just so happened_ that my new home world had a place called Yukigakure with a man dressed like a kage as a leader without having anything to do with Naruto or ninja... Even as I had that thought I knew I was just in denial, however. Wearing basically nothing in the dead of winter could only be explained by chakra cheats and my sister was being trained daily in martial arts at the ripe age of six for god’s sake (or was it _for_ _Kishimoto’s sake,_ now?).

My grandfather, _the Yukikage,_ ended his speech with a powerful: “... we’ll persevere for forty more!” and the crowd erupted into enthusiastic, _loud_ applause. My relative (cousin?) who had been nagged at before the speech shot out of his seat, jumped onto a wall and ran along it toward the exit. I frowned at the very blatant use of Ninja Magic.

The woman whose baby-talk had been interrupted earlier and was probably my aunt let out a hearty sigh and lamented: “Mou, that kid,” to no one in particular. She then turned to me and continued in an overly cheerful voice: “Good thing you’re too cute to ever become a troublemaker like your cousin, Yuu-chan!” I didn’t know if she expected me to react to that in some way and emphatically did not. 

She reminded me of another dimension of my current predicament; I was someone with the potential to _become_ something here. Or really, no matter what I did I _would_ become something, and would have an effect on those around me, whether that effect was annoying my aunt, stopping the Uchiha massacre or causing a butterfly effect that lost the Shinobi Alliance the Fourth World War. Before I could let myself get lost in the various effects that different actions I could take would have on events I backtracked and reminded myself that if I stayed in Yuki, I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I would never encounter any of the Main Cast and I could live out my life however I wanted. If the Naruto the anime was anything to go by, major world events would sort themselves out.

I wasn’t completely able to shake the niggling feeling that my mere existence could have already caused a butterfly-effect with disastrous effects, though. I wasn't even sure if I was stealing the life of a canon Yuu who lived as an unremarkable background character, or if I was supposed to exist at all. For all I knew there was a reincarnated girl in the background of canon and I was but a fun thought experiment of Kishimoto's. This was all perfect fuel for an existential crisis.

I didn’t pay as much attention to my surroundings for the following hours of festival exploration as I would have if the bombshell of my current existence had been dropped on any other day. Mother brought me to several festively decorated courtyards tucked away inside of the larger apartment buildings we passed earlier. They had stalls selling food and organizing games. There was laughter and music, and I was thankful for my headphones. I fell asleep.

\---

How did you live after having your worldview turned upside-down (again)?

When you never really did anything in the first place, and couldn’t, the answer turned out to be by doing the same exact thing as before. I might have brooded a bit more now, but that was the only discernible difference to my routine. I was and continued to be an unremarkable baby. Hiyoku could tell something was wrong, but it wasn’t like I could explain my situation to her, both because I lacked the ability to speak and because there was no way talking about my reincarnation to others was a good idea.

I needed to strategize. As I saw it, there were only two viable options: being a civilian or becoming a very strong ninja. Chuunin and lower were cannon fodder when they weren’t wearing plot armor, and since my village basically didn’t exist where the main storyline was concerned, I might as well have been naked. Relying on deus ex machina would not be an option.

Thought about like that, it would certainly be safer if I chose a civilian life. I would have less of a chance of messing up anything important as well. Not causing an apocalypse or dying a gruesome death sounded pretty sweet, but I didn’t know if I would ultimately have a choice in the matter. After all, my sister was being trained in the ninja arts daily. 

It would have been nice to be able to save lives and prevent unnecessary trauma, but who knew how any change I made would affect the future? I wasn't about to risk the continued existence of humanity for a few people I thought were cool as characters in a show.

I was horrified by the realisation that by leading a civilian life I could actually have more of an impact on the world than by being a ninja. If the theoretical canon Yuu whose life I might have been stealing was supposed to become a ninja, me not being one could really mess things up.

I told myself to slow down. I was still a baby, and no one expected me to understand what they were saying, let alone to be able to make career decisions.

Not that that helped at all.

\---

My life slowly started changing but still could not be considered interesting by a long shot. I thus had _plenty_ of time to ruminate over the possible implications of my existence and was slowly starting to go crazy. In desperate need for a distraction, I looked to one of the most efficient methods of escape I could remember from my previous life: books. Really, stories in any form would do, but all I had here were books. The main problem with my plan to drown my sorrows in those of fictional characters was that I couldn’t read, and thus had to finagle others into doing so for me. Luckily adults were stupidly easy to manipulate. They caught on to my excitement about books faster than I expected and before I knew it, they were reading to me excessively. It might have only been “age appropriate” books that really didn’t have any plot to speak of, but at least I could try to figure out how to read Japanese, which gave me a _goal_ to work toward. It was something to think about other than whether I was _supposed_ to be here or not or the fact that I certainly didn’t ask to be.

Hiyoku molted, and in the place of her wonky black and brown fuzz there was now beautiful brown plumage that melted into white to form a T-shape between her eyes on her forehead. In my opinion, she was even more adorable than before. Once she learnt to fly she left my side more often, going on hunts with the other owls. I missed her constant presence; reality felt less real without her.

A few weeks later Hanemi started going to Yuki's version of the academy. It didn’t bode well for my tentative plans to avoid ninja-hood that she had to attend even though she wanted to be a “super awesome researcher like otou-san” when she grew up. In any case Hanemi took to the academy like a fish to water. She boasted that she was able to answer the teachers’ questions in class and was the best in her year at throwing kunai. 

Within two weeks she had dragged home a timid dark-haired girl proclaiming her to be her “new absolute best friend ever, Eri-chan!” Eri called father “Kihazu-sama” the first time she met him, and I finally knew my surname. If I had been paying attention during the founding day festival I probably would have learnt it earlier, but better late than never, I thought. I reflected that if he was being called “-sama”, my father might actually have some political sway from being grandfather’s son.

I was surprised one morning by mother waking me up in what seemed to be her mission gear. Her hitai-ate looked warm; it was made out of fluffy grey material and had ear-flaps. The symbol on it was the constellation from the curtains at the venue of grandfather’s speech. She wore a white sweater-like jacket that was criss-crossed by blue wire-like bands of fabric that appeared to hold her loose sleeves tight to her form at the shoulder and above the elbow, but serve no function anywhere else. She had dark pants with vertical stripes that were mostly covered by high white leg warmers. With her hair in a tight ponytail and her brown owl, which was _still_ taller than I was, sitting on her shoulder, she cut quite an intimidating figure. I could barely recognize her as the same woman who took care of me and usually wore warm, homely clothing. She held me in her arms differently from usual on account of a metallic _thing_ strapped to her right wrist and I could see a metallic pack of sorts on her back over her shoulder. I wondered what they were. I couldn't remember anything like them from Naruto the anime.

“Okaa-san is going on a mission, so you and Hiyoku-chan are going to spend the day with obaa-san until otou-san gets back from the lab, okay?” she asked, stroking my hair. I gave my best impression of “excited baby”, because staying with grandmother meant that I might be able to see _grandfather, the Yukikage_ , whose status as my favorite grandparent was unaltered by the revelation that he was my new hometown’s military dictator.

It wasn’t meant to be, however. It turned out that as a kage, grandfather had a lot of work, and even though going to grandmother’s when mother had missions became a weekly thing, I never saw him. On rare days when grandmother was busy with whatever it was she did when she was busy, I was passed off to my teenage/young adult cousins Tourou and Touka. Spending time with the two of them quickly became the highlight of my exceedingly dull life. Tourou, the problem cousin who was prone to running on walls, would play the flute for me, which I was totally going to get him to teach me to do when I had more finger dexterity. After we burned through all of the children’s books he had, I was able to get him to read more advanced material to me, if not anything about history that would give me clues as to _when_ I was.

(“Why are you reading _The interactions between jutsu and the chakra system_ to her?” “She made grabby hands at this book, and look, she’s happy!” “That’s hardly age-appropriate - she’s too young to know what chakra even _is._ ” “But look at how well she’s paying attention! Even if she doesn’t understand half of what I’m saying she’s certainly _entertained_.” “...”)

While Tourou would keep me from ripping my hair out in boredom, Touka was the one to do the things that actually kept me alive more often than not. Other than for essential functions like changing, feeding, and stepping in to act as the voice of reason though, I didn’t see her much. She seemed nice enough, but she was usually busy reading something, training somewhere or hanging out with her boyfriend, who was around too often for my liking. He was from the clan with the light-teal hair and eye-streaks, and my first impression of him was that he was a bit snobbish. It was probably just because of his sleek, high ponytail, but he didn’t do anything to break that impression either. Touka was too good for him, in my unbiased opinion.

While I was never taken past the maze of wooden pathways out to town, grandmother and Tourou often brought me out to explore within the walled area that I understood to be the Kihazu clan compound. On one notable occasion Tourou forgot to dress me in my warm shawl and instead used some chakra trick to make me feel like I was swaddled by a heater. 

My favorite place in the compound became the garden of countless ice sculptures that stood around the gazebo that marked the furthest reach of the roofed walkway system. The statues represented all manner of things from ninja battles spanning multiple sculptures to animals and abstract shapes (often with vaguely hexagonal motifs), and Tourou liked to make up stories for them as we browsed. He especially liked to talk about a sculpture of a flutist that he bragged he had shaped himself when he made chuunin. To be honest, it wasn’t one of the best sculptures there, its edges being less well defined than those of many of the others, including the elegant one of a noblewoman made by Touka. I thought you could tell that a lot of passion went into making it just by looking at it though, so I liked it.

As much as I loved the sculpture garden, its existence did confirm one of my worst fears, however. If ice sculptures were able to stay intact for multiple years, there was no way it ever got warmer than 0 in Yuki. I lamented my fate of being cold for the rest of my life before remembering that no one in my clan seemed to need much clothing outdoors. I hoped that the fact that I was always bundled up didn’t mean that whatever genetic quirk kept everyone else orange-haired warm had skipped over me. That would have just been unfair.

On walks through the forest dotted by training grounds that took up most of the Kihazu compound I hoped to catch a peek of someone training, but never did. I might have wanted to be a civilian, but you could hardly blame me for being curious. I _had_ been a Naruto fangirl in my last life, after all. Curse my ninja chaperones and their ability to sense where other ninja were and have the sense to avoid them when with a small child.

I _did_ at least get to watch two ninja melt the ice off of a lake with nothing but a wave of chakra, though. It turned out that it was a tradition of sorts for our clan to hold beach picnics by the small lake just outside the compound, and skilled ninja were willing to burn chakra to allow everyone to swim. I hoped that I would be able to carelessly sprawl on lounge chairs made of snow and dive in the unfrozen lake like I could see father and Hanemi doing when I was older too. For now I was stuck sitting with mother at some tables to the side. She chatted amicably with others, but she and all the non-Kihazu-born people I could see looked a bit like they would have rather been somewhere indoors. The orange-haired teenage girls I could see sunbathing in bikinis by the shore looked much more comfortable.

\---

Time trudged by and before I knew it my family was holding my first birthday party for me. Other than grandfather showing up to my delight and that face-hitter Danrou being invited to my dismay, nothing worth mentioning happened. Like most of my life, it was predictable and boring.

What _wasn’t_ predictable, however, was that father was chosen to be part of a long-term project based in the capital of the Land of Snow that would have him away from home more often than not. 

“Why can’t you just do the project at the research lab like all the others otou-san?” Hanemi asked when father broke the news. 

“Ah, that would be because it’s a very important project that Kazahana Sousetsu-sama himself wants to follow closely,” he calmly replied. 

“But otou-san, I don’t want you to go! You need to stay here with me and okaa-san and Yuu-chan!” she complained. 

“I don’t want to leave either moonbeam,” he admitted, “I’m part of the team studying how to use Kihazu chakra with technology, however, and my team is going to play a crucial role in the beginning stages of this project. Besides, I’ll be back for an entire week once a month, so we’ll still see each other pretty often, if not nearly often enough. You can send me messages with Hakurei however much you want to too. I promise that whenever you send one I’ll always answer, so it will be just like we were having a conversation.”

The conversation continued quite predictably from there with Hanemi continuing to protest and my parents placating her, and I considered the tidbit that father's research team was studying how to use _Kihazu_ chakra in technology. If he needed to mention explicitly that it was chakra from the _Kihazu_ that was used, it must have been different from regular chakra, perhaps having the cold-resistant qualities that caused no one to bat an eye when my eight-year-old clansmen had snowball fights in t-shirts. It would certainly explain why _I_ wasn’t as immune to the chill as older members. I was only a baby after all, and didn’t have as much chakra or practice using it. 

It sounded like a best-case-scenario to my ears. It seemed like all I would have to do to never be cold again would be to learn to use my chakra, which I resolved to work on as soon as possible. Something new and engaging to occupy my time was certainly welcome, and since everyone I encountered with orange hair showed the same cold-resistance, even civilian Kihazu had to be able to use chakra to some degree.

I willfully ignored the part of myself that pointed out that it wasn't normal for babies to practice their chakra manipulation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone who has left comments and kudos! Seeing proof of people enjoying my writing gives me the warm fuzzies :)
> 
> I'm trying to write one chapter per week, so stay posted!


	3. Chapter 3

My first opportunity to make good on my resolve to start practicing my chakra control came when mother put me to sleep that night. The wait for her to do so was longer than usual, which annoyed me until I realised why it was. While I had been deep in thought about the utility of never being cold again in a place where it was always below freezing and pondering the best ways to start training my chakra, my family had been having a touching moment bonding over how much they would miss each other. Everyone but me was teary-eyed, and now that I thought about it, we had been in a group hug for a while, hadn’t we? I felt a lot like I was intruding, even if everyone else counted me as part of the situation.

I didn’t feel as close to this family as I had my old one, so moments like these were a bit awkward. So far, my saving grace had been that since I was a baby, no one really expected me to understand anything. This meant that no one could complain, or really even tell, if I decided to weigh the pros and cons of living in the ninja analogue of Antarctica instead of paying attention to any given emotional situation. Mother and father seemed nice enough, and I was thankful that they took care of me, but I had an adult mind, so I hadn’t imprinted on them the same way I would have as a normal baby. I didn’t think the whole “being reborn into ninja-fantasy-land” -thing had me in the best mental state to go forging familial bonds in any case. I hoped my family wouldn’t take it personally. I abstractly noted that it would probably be a good idea to try to get closer to them anyway, but I had no idea how to do so. 

Well, I could leave those thoughts for another day. 

Now I had chakra control exercises to get to.

One of Tourou’s books mentioned that ninjas used meditation to deepen their understanding of their chakra systems, so I thought that would be a good place to start. When I got to an acceptable level with that, I could move on to moving chakra around my body, then to the leaf-sticking exercises I remembered from Naruto’s canon, then perhaps to some experimentation with wall-walking. “ _How hard could it be?”_ I thought, jinxing myself.

I dithered for a moment before beginning my meditation. Starting training in Ninja Magic seemed like something that should have more fanfare than just slipping your eyelids shut. I thought it would feel a lot more official if I could settle into a lotus position, though I knew perfectly well that I needed to look like I was sleeping if any adults came to look in on me.

In an exaggerated motion, I snapped my eyes shut and wiggled into a comfortable position to actually begin instead of stalling. From what I understood, I was supposed to empty my mind and focus my senses inward, which… I couldn’t say I was _completely_ sure how to do… I tried my best, but whatever I was doing, I didn’t think it was working. I thought the fact that I _thought_ that it wasn’t working was a sign that my mind wasn’t empty enough, so I doubled down on the not-thinking part of the exercise. 

As a direct result, I fell asleep. 

\---

I was a bit embarrassed when I woke up in the morning, but I was comforted by the fact that since no one would ever know I was meditating, no one would know how bad I was doing either.

My chance for a take two came when mother left me on the floor with Hiyoku and some age-appropriate toys while she cooked lunch. Hiyoku looked at me a bit weirdly when I laid down and wiggled into a comfortable position with a flourish, so I tried to give her a “don’t worry, I know what I’m doing,” -look. I didn’t keep my eyes open long enough to tell if it had any effect on her, though.

I focused my senses inward and… … … … ...nothing.

Even after fifteen minutes I couldn’t feel _a thing_ and I was getting increasingly annoyed. I should have known better than to expect this to be easy, but I _had_ expected it to be easy and was thus having a hard time _not-thinking_ through frustration.

I took deep breaths. 

This stage would just take a bit longer than I thought. If chakra was that easy, civilians would be deft hands at using it for mundane purposes too, after all. 

With a barrage of mental sighs, I made meditation part of my daily routine, fit into odd moments here and there when I was left without supervision other than Hiyoku. About two weeks in, my technique improved somehow and I finally felt _something_ : a fleeting warmth that was like humming at the very edge of my hearing threshold, except as a spiritual sensation. That was the best I could try to put it into words. Try as I might I couldn’t catch onto it again when it slipped away, but now I knew it was _there_. I smiled proudly at Hiyoku, who looked a bit confused as to why I was suddenly smiling after waking up, but ultimately seemed happy to see me happy. What would I do without that fluffy little ball of sunshine in my life?

I continued my meditative efforts to improve the consistency and length of my contact with my chakra, and one day, when I was _just_ about to beat my record time, I was plucked from my cozy play-carpet to go to see off father. I had a distinct sense of deja-vu. 

For the second time in my life, I was taken down the path leading to the outside of the Kihazu compound. This time there were considerably less Kihazu flitting around and exactly zero colorful lanterns, though. The roads outside the compound didn’t have as much snow buildup as last Founding Day either, thanks to the efforts of two ninja I could see using jutsu to clear it away. With nothing but a few deft hand signs, their chakra formed snow into life-sized bears that lumbered away. My eyes gleamed at the sight of the impossible being made possible by chakra. _That_ was an example to aspire to.

I thought it was a brilliant idea to combine chores and training like that as well. It seemed much more effective than using mundane snow shovels. I wondered if I would be able to use that snow-bear jutsu when I was older, or if snow-shaping was a kekkei genkai. I knew that generating ice was definitely a bloodline limit, but I had never heard of any snow jutsu before now. _“Trust the place called Village Hidden in the Snow to have ninja with snow-related abilities,”_ I thought.

In any case, instead of walking deeper into the city like last time, we took a path in the opposite direction toward one of the mountains that surrounded Yukigakure on three sides. As we left the village proper, the snow on either side of the road got higher and higher until It was deeper than most of the buildings in the Kihazu compound were tall. It was mildly unnerving to have something as unstable as snow close around us like that, and I was relieved when we made it to our destination, which was a cavern dug into the mountain we had been walking toward. It was about the size I imagined an airplane hangar would have been in the Old World, and to one side of it there was a gleaming, robust train. Workers were running around it in a frenzy, loading and unloading various barrels and crates, and its tracks led to a dark tunnel stretching out into the abyss.

The sight of the train sent a wave of relief through me. There were no trains or technology that could lead to the making of trains in Naruto the anime, which meant that I could place myself after the events of canon with relative guarantee. Sure, it was possible that trains were a Yuki-specific thing that was never mentioned in the anime because no one cared about Yuki, but how could technology like _the railroad_ possibly stay in only one nation? In canon they transported goods using _caravans_ , so surely trains would be too attractive of an upgrade for anyone to pass up? _Surely_ in this shinobi world people would _murder_ the knowledge of how to make trains out of Yuki? It couldn’t be possible that Yuki was such a backwater nation that no one even _noticed_ it had railroads, right?

I smiled to myself. It was good to be able to leave the known canon in the past and look to the future, even if only tentatively. I would be just like any old Joe, not knowing the future life events of random people from another country in painful detail.

It might have been a good idea to listen to the niggling feeling that I wouldn't get off so easily.

Perhaps sensing my transfixation on the train, father started telling us stories about riding the railroad and the time he briefly worked on a locomotive engine that ran on chakra before the idea was scrapped. He didn’t seem inclined to board the train until the very last moment. The very last moment did come eventually, though. The workers scuttling around slowly thinned out and a bell rang which father said signaled the train leaving in five minutes. I was pulled into a group hug that lasted a full one of those five. 

“I’ll miss you lots, otou-san,” Hanemi whispered when we pulled apart.

Father turned back and bent down to her eye level and replied: “I know. I’ll miss you, your mother and Yuu-chan for every second of every day too, moonbeam.”

Hanemi nodded, latching onto him in another hug.

“Say itterasshai to otou-san, Yuu-chan,” mother encouraged me as father stood up.

I paused for a moment and thought about the fact that I actually _could_ say “itterasshai” if I wanted to. It had been awhile since I had last tried to talk, so I didn’t know how I would sound, but it just _had_ to be better than last time, which was when I had tried to say “Hiyoku” almost a year ago. It occurred to me that if my first words were “bye, father”, it would definitely be a fondly remembered father-daughter moment. Seeing a clear path to drawing myself closer to a member of my family, I hurriedly made up my mind to speak up before the moment passed. 

Missing only a few beats, which was acceptable for a baby, I blurted out: “Idde-assai odou-sa!”

I really shouldn’t have expected to be eloquent without practice, but father didn’t seem to notice my horrible pronunciation. His orange eyes lit up and his entire face stretched into a broad smile.

“Thank you, moonbeam!” he said excitedly as he pulled mother and me into yet another long hug. 

While father was certainly pleased, I wasn’t feeling the father-daughter bonding as strongly as he was, sadly. It was somewhat heartwarming to see that I could make him so happy, I supposed, but really all I had done was successfully execute a ploy to use my first words to have maximum emotional impact. It wasn’t substantially different from training adults to read to me. I _really_ had no clue how to connect with my family if elaborate plots wouldn’t count on my side.

In the world outside of my thoughts, father turned away from us after a final “Ittekimasu!” and started walking toward the train with a man I recognized to be the face-hitter Danrou’s father. I recognized that it was probably petty to continue to call an actual baby “the face-hitter” in my head, but didn’t care overmuch. It was a name of endearment, if you squinted a little. 

A minute later, father appeared in one of the train’s (once again hexagonal) windows and waved to us. We waved back until the train lumbered to a start and the passenger car disappeared down the tunnel. Hanemi continued even longer, only stopping when the entire train was out of view. The chugging of the train slowly faded away as it gained distance and speed, and father was officially off to develop what he had called "a house-less greenhouse".

On an unrelated note I decided that I would call the cavern _the train hangar_.

The walk back to the Kihazu compound was subdued. That is, it was until Hanemi started prodding me.

“Ne Yuu-chan, you said ‘Itterasshai’ to otou-san earlier, so does that mean you can talk now? _Finally_! You’ve always been so quiet even though all Danrou-kun does is babble nonsense every time I see him! Ne, can you say ‘Hanemi-neesan’ for me? That’s what you should call me, you know, ‘cause I’m your supercool big sister!”

I had to admit to myself that I hadn’t thought through all the repercussions of breaking my silence. Somehow, despite the fact that such a comment is what gave me the idea to say my first words in the first place, I had forgotten that people liked to ask babies to say things, or that showing that I could communicate meant that I might actually be expected to respond to people. I sighed deeply at the thought of now being obligated to react to things. If I spaced out I now ran the risk of seeming _rude_. I internally grumbled that talking was hardly worth the cost of being harassed when I couldn’t express complex thoughts without breaking the “perfectly normal child, nothing to see here” -persona I had been trying to build. 

Seeing that I was blanking out, Hanemi revamped her efforts to get my attention, proving at least two of the points I had just made to myself. “Yuu-chan! I know you can do it! It’s easy: just six syllables! Haa-nee-mii-nee-saa-n!”

Mother seemed like she was considering telling Hanemi to stop when I decided that silence probably wasn’t worth the effort and shot off an eloquent: “Hangami-neesha!”

Hanemi beamed much like father had and immediately asked me to say “Hakurei”, the name of her snowy owl. I sighed and resigned myself to my fate.

Luckily, she stopped when we got back home.

\---

After that day, we slowly settled into a rhythm that didn’t include father, and life went on as usual. Without father to look after us, on the days when mother was called away for a mission Hanemi and I (and our owls) spent the night at grandmother’s place. She was the worst offender for trying to get me to say things in an annoying way, but since we were staying with her later than we had before, we got to see grandfather when he got back from… wherever it was he got back from. Was there a yukikage tower here? Regardless of _where_ exactly grandfather got back from, though, when he did, he always seemed exhausted. He still spared a warm smile for us, though, and always asked how our days had been. Hanemi never failed to reply with a rambling tale about her day at the academy with Eri and her other friends, while I choked out mangled words like: “scurbdure gurdn” and “read boogs”. For his very non-condescending conversational manner, grandfather made it onto my shortlist of favorite people to talk to. The only other person on that list was Tourou at the moment, who hadn’t annoyed me with “say ___” -type requests since I started calling him “Tourou-neesan” in retaliation.

On days when we got to see grandfather, Hanemi’s growing hero-worship of the man was very obvious. Her class had started going over a unit having something to do with him and she started asking questions she already knew the answer to like, “Did you _really_ help found R&D?” or “Did you _really_ singlehandedly defeat five squads of Kiri-nin when they attacked the one conference with Kazehana Sachihiro-sama?” There were stars in her eyes whenever she listened to grandfather speak, especially when he would tell stories related to his work over breakfast. They were always about little things, like the time a genin filed five pages of original poetry instead of his mission report or the time a chuunin got a potful of ink to the face when she surprised a secretary by replacing herself with a potted plant, but from the way Hanemi was looking at him, he could have been telling us about how he defeated the armies of all five major elemental nations single handedly. I thought grandfather was impressive for being a kage too (and really, I just couldn’t get over the fact that my _grandfather_ was a _kage_ ), but Hanemi was going a bit overboard, in my opinion. I reminded myself that I shouldn’t really shouldn’t judge her though. She was only six, after all.

Founding Day came and went, this time with Tourou playing the flute in one of the courtyards and no grand speech from grandfather. That had probably been an anniversary thing or something. Father’s first vacation week overlapped with Founding Day, which was nice, I supposed. He laughed when I yelled “Tourou-neesan!” when I saw Tourou playing with his band. Tourou visibly winced and tried very hard to scold me with vicious eyebrow-movements alone, much to everyone’s audible amusement. It was impressive that his music sounded just as haunting as always when his eyes were screaming murder at me. I made up my mind to ask him to teach me to play the flute as soon as I gained more fine motor function in my fingers.

It was around the time when Hanemi started her second year at the academy when I was finally confident enough in my ability to hold onto the warm buzzing of my chakra to start moving it around my body. It wasn’t as slow going as learning to find the feeling of chakra had been, but it still took me a few days to get down even the barest of basics. It was the easiest to move chakra to your hands, so that was naturally where I started. It took a _lot_ of time and patience, but with a tentative effort to kind of... push(?) my chakra, I was eventually able to move some from my core to my right palm. As I held it there, it faintly gave off the feeling of a metaphysically humming warm sauna with low humidity. It probably wasn’t enough to keep even my palm warm outside yet, but it was proof of concept and I grinned to myself manically. I may or may not have also cackled a bit, but that was neither here nor there. 

I had _superpowers_.


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody understood why I was suddenly happier than usual the next day, but they didn’t remark upon it any further than an offhand: “What’s got you in such a good mood today, Yuu-chan?” No one suspected that I, a baby, was happy because I had taken my first steps toward mastering chakra control. Kids just had mood swings like that sometimes, not the patience to meditate for weeks without prompting.

Within a week I got to the point where I could make my chakra flow to different parts of my body without lapsing into meditation, and from that point on I practiced doing so constantly. It didn’t seem like just moving it around depleted my reserves, so the only thing that could stop me from practicing was a lack of willpower, which wasn’t a problem. I had nothing better to do, and it was very satisfying to feel the warmth of my chakra spread throughout my body. I couldn’t channel it to more than one or two places at a time yet, though, and since channeling chakra throughout the entire body at once was an obvious prerequisite for staying completely warm, I devoted myself to changing that _._

The longer it took for me to master the more impressed I became with Hanemi for managing it before she was six. When I started to feel like I’d hit a wall in my progress, I thus found it natural to turn to her for advice. The fact that she was an actual child and probably wouldn’t think it was too weird if I asked overly specific questions on a topic I wasn’t supposed to know anything about was a plus as well, and who knew; maybe a closer sisterly bond could grow from this.

“How you shday warm alway?” I lisped to her one day when mother had left us to our own devices.

She looked up from the homework she was doing and unhelpfully stated the obvious: “Because I’m a Kihazu.”

I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes.

“But _I’m_ no’ warm,” I continued, trying to get her to elaborate.

“Well, yeah, but you’re a baby, and babies never are,” she stated summarily.

At that point I abandoned all finesse and started asking increasingly specific questions. After five minutes of unsuccessful interrogation and an unsolicited rant about the genius of modified suiton techniques grandfather used on metal and stone that he heated to such absurd temperatures with his chakra that they melted, the truth finally came out. Hanemi did not, in fact, constantly channel chakra throughout the body like I was trying to do. Apparently, as the passive flow of chakra around the body increased with age, all Kihazu children became immune to the cold automatically, and there was nothing I could do to affect the process.

Essentially, all my hard work had been for nothing. Thinking back, seeing father take a nap in swimming trunks at the lake probably should have tipped me off to the fact that Kihazu cold-resistance didn’t come from something done consciously, but 20/20 hindsight and all that. 

Robbed of my goal for practicing chakra control, I spent a few days listlessly doing absolutely nothing until I felt like I was going to die of boredom. It turned out that having something, anything, to do with my time was enough motivation to train on its own.

When I got tired of just moving my chakra around and getting small pieces of paper to stick to my hand, I wheedled some Kihazu-specific exercises out of Hanemi by asking her about her training. Sadly, I didn’t think I’d have the chance to try most of them out. A large portion of them involved melting and unmelting snow and ice in various ways, and I doubted I would be able to get a pile of snow or block of ice inside without anyone noticing, let alone be able to melt it all over the floor without mother instantly appearing with a mop. I did try my hand at warming small objects with the heating-quality of my Kihazu chakra, though. 

I found it counterintuitive that instead of remaining warm, the moment my chakra left the objects I channeled it into, they returned to their previous temperature. Disappointingly, I didn’t get any more of an explanation of this phenomenon from Hanemi than: “That’s just what Kihazu chakra does.” I would have to find an innocent sounding way to ask Tourou later. He read me enough books that he probably wouldn’t question how I knew Kihazu chakra did that.

\---

During the “summer”, mother started dragging me along with her whenever she went to have tea with her friends. I had mixed feelings about this development. I might have gotten to leave the Kihazu compound more often and get to see more of Yukigakure, but I was also forced to hang out with mother’s friends’ children. Like with Danrou (whose name will always be followed by “the face hitter” in my thoughts), I had no idea what to do with them. I thought I had been good with children in my previous life, but apparently that didn’t apply when I myself was a child. 

Some days the pain of being forced to interact with children felt worth it, though, with all the new things I learnt about Yuki. One of the first of these things was that it was a lot smaller than I had expected. The grouping of grey apartments with chaotically synergistic window layouts in which Founding Day festivities were held turned out to be most of the city, which put my estimation of Yukigakure’s population at the ridiculously low number of 3000 inhabitants. Konoha and other major villages were something like 20 times larger! The places I had lived in my previous life had been over 50 times larger! I was relieved that despite Yuki’s small size, it still had a library, hospital, mall-esque indoor market and other such amenities. I wondered if I would start experiencing small town things like coming to know the entire village like the back of your hand, recognizing most of the people you see on the street or desperately wanting to leave to see the world. Only time would tell.

The mystery of where grandfather worked was solved quite soon after mother started taking me out; in the middle of town there stood a large pagoda-esque building with what I thought was the symbol for “snow” on it which really couldn’t be anything but the Yukikage Tower. I asked mother just to be sure, and she confirmed that yes, that was where my ojiisan’s office was. I thought that its combination of traditional roofs tapering off of every floor and modern/Yuki-style elements like the large windows made it pretty stylish.

Since mother had friends in other clans, I got to see some other clan compounds too. None of them had the same sprawling walkways the Kihazu compound did, and the amount of times I saw people having to clear away snow so that there would be a place to walk convinced me that my clan compound’s structure was a stroke of genius. All of the compounds seemed to have their own quirks, like how all the buildings in the Fuyukuma compound were made of stone or the Rouga clan had elaborate snow sculptures all over the place. Something always felt vaguely _off_ about the compounds, though, and I was surprised to notice that it was that their windows were rectangular. It made me realize that things I had never thought I would get used to, like Yuki’s eternal winter and constantly seeing ninjas out and about, had become normal to me without me consciously realising it, which was a chilling thought. Who knew what else would become part of the norm in the future?

\---

When I turned two, mother decided that I was ready to start training. It was just little things at first: stretches and finger dexterity exercises disguised as games and the like. I thought I was being started pretty young, but thinking back to all the times Hanemi disappeared to train before she started at the academy, I concluded that it was within the realm of expectations. 

Within a month, I seemingly graduated from the basic exercises I had been doing and was taken to one of the Kihazu compound’s few indoor training halls. It was large and somewhat drafty, but I appreciated not having to train outside when I wasn’t immune to the cold yet.

“You have shown yourself to be ready to progress to the next phase of your training,” mother told me. “You’ll find that the Yukiru style taijutsu I am going to teach you has a very different approach from the traditional Kihazu style. Like Hanemi, it is unlikely that you’ll end up using this style exclusively, but learning it will give you more options to work with in a fight, so do not take your training lightly. Now, the first step to learning any taijutsu style is becoming well versed in its kata. The first stance of the Yukiru style looks like this…”

And so my training started for real.

I thought that learning the moves to kata was a bit like learning the moves to a dance. The powerful punches and kicks that punctuated the evasive moves of the style mother was showing me formed a flowing rhythm in my mind, and it was easy to get lost in the movements as I was made to repeat them ad nauseam.

Sadly, throwing kunai didn’t come as naturally to me. They felt clumsy in my hands and mother was constantly correcting my grip. It was a bit embarrassing how little I was hitting the target, but hey, I was _two_.

On the days when mother was on missions, grandmother started teaching me the _searing palm_ taijutsu style of the Kihazu clan. True to its name, it had a lot of palm strikes, and like the gentle fist, it was built around sending bursts of chakra into the opponent. Instead of blocking tenketsu, though, the bursts were meant to burn skin and cause heat-damage to muscles and organs. Grandmother told me that if my control was good enough, I would be able to fry a brain with a single touch. Conversations like that drove home the reality that I wasn’t learning kata and weapon-throwing for fun, but being taught to kill. I didn’t particularly like the reminders.

Around the time I advanced to my second set of mother’s kata, she also started teaching me to read and write. It was something of a wakeup call; there was no way this was normal for two year olds, even in a world where children were shoved onto the battlefield before puberty.

This was confirmed when Hanemi burst in on mother showing me how to write ‘s’-syllables and tried to get her to abandon my lesson. 

“Kaasan!” she said whinily. “You said you’d teach me how to make my footsteps quiet _today_! You didn’t teach _me_ to write until I was _four_ , so you can work with Yuu-chan _later_. I need to learn _now_ so I can beat Seimi in fortress war!”

Being two years ahead of the curve in a world like this one was undoubtedly dangerous, but somehow I found myself just going with the flow. Maybe I was lazy or complacent, or maybe my ability to associate the possible hazards with real life was malfunctioning. Whatever the case was, I knew I probably should have been downplaying my skills more than I did, but couldn’t find it within myself to actually do so.

\---

When I turned three, I got a flute for my birthday from Tourou. I also got training kunai, training shuriken, and training versions of various other things that you could use to kill someone, but those were far less important in my mind.

“I can teach you between missions, Yuu-chan,” Tourou said with a wink when I thanked him for his thoughtful gift.

I found playing the shinobue, which was the proper name for the flute as Tourou kept reminding me, to be really fun, and progressed from making hair-raising screeching sounds to actual music relatively quickly. Maybe all those recorder lessons in elementary school once upon a time had actually been useful? Whether or not skills from my previous life had any effect, Tourou wouldn’t shut up about his “awesome teaching skills” for what felt like forever. Once I started being able to approximately carry a tune, I let the shinobue take over a lot of the free time I’d previously spent playing around with my chakra. This meant, much to my family’s owls’ annoyance, that I played for at least two hours every day.

When I started gaining confidence, I tried my hand at playing songs from my old world. I quite liked the idea that I could share something from my previous life with my family in this one, and the fact that that something was annoying earworms somehow made it all the better. My family didn’t question the odd songs I was playing, chalking up to weird influences from Tourou. Tourou himself was convinced that I was some kind of songwriting prodigy when I played Let It Go for him, and he couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. He tried to talk me into playing publicly, but I was unsure about the idea. Maybe I’d consider it some day, but that day wasn’t today, ( _or tomorrow either, Tourou_ ).

\---

A few weeks after I turned four, grandfather announced his intent to retire, and the next Yukikage was inaugurated that Founding Day. 

What felt like the entire village once again stuffed into the same auditorium where my worldview had been turned upside down a few years ago. Grandfather gave a speech about passing the torch and new beginnings and somesuch, throwing around terms like “perseverance” and “community” liberally. When the crowd applauded and he stood to the side of the podium, our new military dictator walked onto the stage.

The man in question was one Seiji Rouga, head of the clan Touka’s boyfriend was from. He looked to be middle-aged, and had chin-length teal hair and blue tattoos trailing down his cheeks from his eyes in customary Rouga fashion. Oddly, his triangular beard was the same dark blue as his tattoos instead of the color of his hair. His gaze was piercing as he spoke of the honor of being chosen to lead the village and rehashed a lot of the inspirational points grandfather had gone over.

Shouts of “Nidaime!” filled the air as grandfather took off the Yukikage hat and gave it to Seiji Rouga, who put it on with a flourish. I didn’t understand how people could be so loud.

As my family left the auditorium and started walking down the lantern-lit street to our first destination of the night, Hanemi declared that when she grew up, she would be the Sandaime Yukikage. It was rather Naruto-like of her.

Our parents assured her that she would be a great Yukikage, and father jokingly ribbed her about coldly ditching his footsteps to follow those of _his_ father. Hanemi giggled.

As the night went on, we saw Tourou and his band play for the third year in a row and gorged ourselves on festival food. I was forced to interact with mother’s friends’ children, but I also got to participate in festival games and won a fish plushie. We all went home satisfied.

Everything was very idyllic. One might even say _too_ idyllic.

I felt vaguely like I had been lulled into a false sense of security when my parents sat me down to talk about starting at the academy the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it doesn't look like I'll be able to keep up with the pace I originally set of one chapter per week -- that was awfully optimistic of me. Getting something posted every 2-3 weeks should be realistic though.  
> I hope you've enjoyed what I've written so far :D


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